Hi there,
A few weeks ago I posted a list of the compliance tools I could name. Martyn Day at AEC Magazine saw it and asked whether it would make an article. It is now in the September/October issue, and this week's newsletter is given over to it.
The short version is that two years ago there were a handful of these tools and there are now nineteen. That growth is not an accident. Rule-based checking has existed in AEC for years but it needed someone to translate written regulation into machine readable rules and then keep maintaining them. AI models can read the regulation as it is actually written, which removes that step. That is the reason compliance has become one of the fastest growing categories in the database.
Below: the full landscape, the distinction that decides which tool is any use to you, and what changes when your client is running the same checks on your package.
Let's get into it. 👇
Compliance software in AEC
Two years ago there were a handful of compliance tools helping AEC professionals navigate building codes and regulations. There are now at least nineteen.
The piece runs across three pages in the September/October issue and covers four things: what compliance actually means on a project, the nineteen tools and how they group, who is doing the checking now that these tools are not aimed only at architects, and what happens when one of them misses something.
The part I would point you to first is the definition. Compliance on a project is doing at least four separate jobs - statutory Building Regulations, contractual Employer's Requirements, the client brief, and a practice's own internal standards. All four arrive as documents and all four get called compliance, but only the first is enforced in law. A tool that is excellent at one of them tells you nothing about how it handles the others.
Nineteen tools, four categories
I have sorted these by what they consume, because that is also an ordering by what your practice needs to have in place before any of them are useful. All nineteen are in the ADDD Database.
Requires a BIM authored model of high enough quality to interrogate. Click on the image to go to the company’s website.
AI-BOB - continuous verification against live models, covering area compliance, accessibility and BIM execution plan checks.
Kestrel Labs - checks natively in Revit, tying results to the model element and citing the code section.
Pirros - quality management review on the Revit project that is already open, with findings surfaced back in the model.
Baumind - reads regulations, checks 3D geometry and auto-generates corrections.
Archie - Revit, Archicad and BIM 360, holding meetings, notes, regulations and design changes on one timeline with code checks alongside.
2. Drawing sets and PDFs
No BIM required, which suits an industry that still demands PDF deliverables.
Helonic - works from 2D PDFs across cross-sheet consistency, code, schedules, references and specs in a single pass.
MarkedUp - sheet index audits, callout verification and schedule sync, positioned as a final audit rather than a first pass.
Archiboost - code compliance and QA/QC with a firm knowledge hub that draws on past project detailing.
Freeda - AI plus expert human review, returning a report in hours
Uptocode - drawing, model and PDF review alongside documentation and specification intelligence, extending into code research.
Tektome - reviews a whole package against statute, the client brief and a practice's own standards, showing each risk with a citation.
Structured AI - QA/QC for drawing packages across both PDF drawings and native Revit models.
Buildcheck - drawing review aimed at reducing authority comments, RFIs and change orders before they arise.
3. Documents and specifications
Aimed at the sheer volume of information a project produces.
CODiii - connects to Google Drive or SharePoint, classifies project documents automatically and runs conflict detection and gap checks.
Specset - cross-references specs, drawings, RFIs and submittals as one system.
Nomic - checks drawings against what it puts at more than 380 building codes, grounded in your own project documents.
Ichi - submittal reviews and document checks at scale, with a persistent memory layer for jurisdiction rules and client preferences.
4. Code research and reference
No project data required, so more of a pre-compliance check on the requirements. The easiest place to start.
UpCodes - searchable code platform now connecting codes directly to specifications.
Struck - regulation lookup and permit checking with cited answers, across several countries including England.
A few of these sit in more than one category. Structured AI works on native Revit models as well as PDFs. Uptocode covers code research alongside package review. The categories are a way of locating where a tool would sit in your own process rather than a fixed classification.
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What this issue means for practice leaders
The distinction that decides whether any of these tools is useful to you is between prescriptive and performance requirements. Where a requirement is prescriptive, meaning a dimension, a U-value or a specified product, it can be tested against a drawing and a computer can now do that better than ever before. Where it is a performance requirement, such as adequate means of escape for the intended occupancy, demonstrating it takes modelling, judgement and a competent person to sign it off. Every one of the nineteen is working the prescriptive side of that line. That is the easier half of the problem, and it is worth knowing before the demo rather than after.
The second thing worth sitting on with is that only a few of these were built solely for architects. A tool that can read a drawing set does not care whose drawing set it is, so a contractor can run one on your package and so can a client before signing anything off.
The checking is going to happen either way.
What is still open is whether you see the results first or last, and that reframes the decision from productivity to exposure. So the useful question is not which of the nineteen is best. It is where your own process currently has the least visibility, or where it absorbs the most time. If you do not know the answer to that, booking a call is the quickest way to find out, and I can tell you more than any demo will.
That's it for this week.
If you are already running one of the nineteen, I would like to know which and how it went. Reply and tell me. I read every response.
Thanks for reading!
Allister
He’s looking a bit old today.
